'Ghost Adventures' couple had history of domestic abuse

Mark and Debbie Constantino, paranormal investigators featured in the Travel Channel's "Ghost Adventures," were found dead inside their daughter's Reno apartment.
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Mark and Debra Constantino on Oct. 24, 2011, near their home in northwest Reno. The couple worked as paranormal investigators specializing in electronic voice phenomenon recordings and often featured on the Travel Channel series "Ghost Adventures."(Photo: David B. Parker, Reno (Nev.) Gazette-Journal)

SPARKS, Nev. — A couple featured in the Travel Channel series Ghost Adventures who were found dead earlier this week had a long history of domestic problems, according to court records from the past three years.

The bodies of Mark Constantino, 53, and his 52-year-old wife, Debra Constantino, were discovered Tuesday inside their daughter's apartment after a standoff with Sparks and Reno police. They had filed temporary protection orders against each other several times, according to documents obtained from Washoe County District Court.

The Constantinos were featured in recent years on the Travel Channel series, including episodes shot at the Mustang Ranch brothel east of Reno, Goldfield Hotel and Market Street Cinema in San Francisco.

In July 2012, Mark Constantino filed an order against his wife claiming that he was worried she might stab him while she was intoxicated. A day later, he dropped the order.

In July of this year, he filed a second order claiming she had tried to stab him. The incident stemmed from an argument over a credit-card debt.

“She grabbed a knife, swiped at me,” Mark Constantino stated on the second protective-order request. “I said I would call the cops. She started screaming at me.”

“If the police had not gotten there in time, I absolutely (would have) been dead. He said, ‘I am the devil and I’m going to slit your throat.'”

Debra Constantino, Reno, in August request for protective order

That’s when a neighbor called police, he said in the court document.

“She went into the bedroom and said I threatened to rape her like she usually did,” he said. “The cops were outside and heard her screaming.”

In a previous fight, she had stabbed him, he said then. An extension for the protective order was denied after Mark Constantino failed to appear in court.

Then in August, Debra Constantino filed for divorce and asked for a protective order against her husband. By that time, she was staying with a friend at a house in northwest Reno — the same house where a man's body was found at around 6:30 a.m. PT Tuesday, Reno police Lt. William Rulla said.

In Debra Constantino's request for the protective order, she claimed her husband and their 23-year-old daughter had beaten and strangled her to the point of passing out.

“He kept texting me telling me to come back,” Debra Constantino said of her husband at the time. “Then he said my dog got away.”

She and a friend — it is unclear whether it was the same friend at whose house she was staying — arrived at her daughter’s Sparks apartment when they were attacked, according to the court documents. Debra Constantino also accused her daughter of beating her friend.

“Mark ripped me out of the car and dragged me into the house like a rag doll,” she said in a statement.

Debra Constantino then was beaten and strangled over and over and dragged from room to room, according to the court document.

“If the police had not gotten there in time, I absolutely (would have) been dead,” she said. “He said, ‘I am the devil and I’m going to slit your throat.' I noticed his work razor had been missing.”

Mark Constantino was arrested in August and booked on suspicion of domestic battery by strangulation, first-degree kidnapping and first-degree domestic battery.

Tuesday's incident unfolded after Reno police received the call about the man's body discovered in a northwest Reno home. The name of the victim in that apparent homicide has not been released, but Sparks police Lt. Rocky Triplett said all of the deaths are "directly related."

Officers later learned that the man's female roommate — later determined to be Debra Constantino — was missing. Officers tracked her cellphone to her daughter's Sparks' apartment, but when Sparks officers knocked on the door, they heard several shots fired and a man yelling for police to stay away.

Police began negotiating with the suspect, but officers eventually used explosives to blow the door open and found both Debra and Mark Constantino dead inside. Officials weren’t saying how all three died but said Mark Constantino fired at officers who approached his daughter's apartment door; police did not return fire.